A bright touch for the ugly utility boxes on city sidewalks

A decorated traffic light utility box in Emeryville, CA. San Francisco Beautiful is running a pilot project to create 20 art-wrapped boxes in the Richmond, Excelsior, and Castro/Mission neighborhoods of San Francisco.

Photo: Kim Komenich / The San Francisco Chronicle

Utility boxes, those bulky green or beige bunkers that sprout along urban sidewalks like weeds, were once very controversial in San Francisco.

The boxes, which stand about 4 feet high and contain equipment for high-speed internet and other communication services, were the subject of furious neighborhood opposition, heavy political lobbying, and threatened lawsuits as recently as 2015.

How quickly things change.

Telecom giant AT&T is a major player in local politics, and last year the Board of Supervisors watered down a 2011 law requiring the company to beautify the ugly boxes by installing landscaping and art.

The nonprofit organization San Francisco Beautiful, which unsuccessfully sued the city in a bid to stop the boxes from being installed, is now partnering with AT&T on a small pilot project to decorate boxes in the Richmond, Excelsior and Castro districts.

As for the neighborhood opposition? While I’m sure there’s plenty of quiet grumbling out there, it’s been drowned out by other battles.

In the past year, our sidewalks have been taken over by scooters, robots and bicycle-share companies. Utility boxes seem downright quaint by comparison.

I understand where San Francisco Beautiful is coming from with this change of heart. If you can’t beat City Hall, you may as well get some of that corporate largesse.

AT&T is paying a $500 stipend to each of the artists who are selected for the box project. A total of 20 boxes — 10 in District One (the Richmond), eight in District Eight (the Castro/Mission), and two in District 11 (the Excelsior/Ingleside) — will be wrapped with vinyl images designed by local artists. The deadline, for those interested in applying, is June 1.

AT&T is also paying San Francisco Beautiful what Executive Director Darcy Brown described as a “small management fee” to run the competition.

“We could continue to spend money on legal fights to stop the inevitable, or we can use those precious funds to bring a little beauty to our city that benefits everyone,” Brown said.

Fair enough.

Now there’s a different question for utility box watchers to ponder:

The artist call requests subjects that “represent the unique aspects of the district and community.” So how do you represent the Richmond, the Excelsior and the Castro — places with storied landmarks, contested histories, and all kinds of local characters — on 4-foot-tall utility boxes?

I think a lot about the impact of what we see on the street every day. So many things we see are so ugly, and it affects how we feel about this city and each other. Adding artwork to utility boxes is, in the grand scheme, a very small thing. But on the neighborhood level, it can be memorable — something that’s a landmark for children, something that brings a smile to the faces of passing adults.

The sidewalks of the Richmond and the Excelsior in particular are crying out for some attention.

The weather in the Richmond is usually foggy, and life is lonely as a pedestrian in the Excelsior. I can’t wait to see some art brightening up those neighborhoods, and I hope artists in those neighborhoods don’t submit obvious choices (like a portrait of Jerry Garcia or the Dutch windmill).

“I always noticed the art in the Tenderloin when I was a kid,” said Alan Khum, a San Francisco artist who regularly works on utility boxes throughout the Bay Area.

Last year, Khum created vinyl wraps for street furniture in the Tenderloin. I asked him how he picked a theme in a neighborhood with so much, um, colorful material.

“I thought about who lived there,” Khum said. “I thought about creating something for kids to remember as they walk around, something friendly — that’s why I chose cat balloons. Bright colors were necessary, too, since the Tenderloin is often dark from tall buildings.”

Lisa Hoffman, an Oakland artist who participated in the same Tenderloin project, offered this piece of advice: “Consider how the art will wrap around the edges and onto the top,” she said. “That’s the most interesting part of your design.”

Artists in these neighborhoods can email peter@sfbeautiful.org for the full call sheet, and I sure hope they do. Utility boxes may be a necessary part of our urban lives, but they’ll look a lot better with some decoration.

Caille Millner is an editorial writer and Datebook columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She has worked at the paper since 2006. On the editorial board, she covers a wide range of topics including business, finance, technology, education and local politics. For Datebook, she writes a weekly column on culture.She is the recipient of the Scripps-Howard Foundation’s Walker Stone Award in Editorial Writing and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Editorial Writing Award.